DETAILED ACTION
This Office action is in reply to correspondence filed 28 October 2025 in regard to application no. 17/859,254. Claims 1-19 are pending, of which claims 1-15 have been withdrawn from consideration. Claims 16-19 are considered below.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Objections
Claim 16 is objected to because of the following informalities: in the phrase “determining any promotional offers or plan eligibility associated with the product or service and similar products or that are functionally equivalent”, the emphasized “or” appears to be superfluous and should be removed. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 16-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because they are directed to software per se. Claim 16 is directed to a "software application" and its instructions, and nothing more. That the application resides "on a mobile device" is merely descriptive of the location of the software; the mobile device is not positively claimed. Software per se is a list of instructions which is neither a process, machine, composition of matter nor a manufacture.
To remedy this the Examiner suggests redrafting the preamble of the claim in "Beauregard form", such as "a non-transitory computer readable medium including instructions which, when executed by a processor, perform a process comprising".
Conclusion
There is no rejection made herein under 35 U.S.C. § 102 or 103, and this has been discussed previously. In regard to the “judicial exception” rejection under § 101 made previously, the combination of the web-scraping and the other previously-claimed elements presents a particular, rather than general, link between the technology and the abstraction, referring to MPEP § 2106.05(e), and so that rejection is withdrawn.
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SCOTT C ANDERSON whose telephone number is (571)270-7442. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:00 to 5:30.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Bennett Sigmond can be reached at (303) 297-4411. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/SCOTT C ANDERSON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3694
